Bradley Kuhn on switching back from Ubuntu to Debian

[Martin Owens]

Hey Elliot,

On Mon, 2010-01-18 at 17:44 -0500, Elliot Murphy wrote:
> Whenever we are discussing Ubuntu One features, I advocate a design
> principle for Ubuntu One: "build no silos". I'm not pretending that
> the Ubuntu One file sharing server source code being closed is a
> wonderful thing, but I do believe that the end user impact if Ubuntu
> One file sharing suddenly disappears is not so bad. The user has all
> their files, and can continue working. The switching cost to dropbox
> is very very low. So it's not Franklin Street Free at the moment, but
> neither is it a silo.

Everyone knows I have a very high appreciation for FLOSS principles. But
the work that's going on with the Music Store... that is going to be
incredibly useful to advocates, it's a missing piece, full integration
and a way to move people away from iTunes. Getting big business music
into the mix will surely have strings that make releasing code more
difficult.

But then I'm in two minds about it. Part of me says that so long as
people get the music without DRM, then the service side as FOSS is a
nice to have, compared with the existence of the service at all, which
seems essential in comparison.

Thoughts?

Martin,